Luke
On Hypocrites
JESUS DESPISED AND scorned the hypocrites, and His wrath was like a
tempest that scourged them. His voice was thunder in their ears and He
cowed them.
In their fear of Him they sought His death; and like moles in the dark
earth they worked to undermine His footsteps. But He fell not into their
snares.
He laughed at them, for well He knew that the spirit shall not be mocked,
nor shall it be taken in the pitfall.
He held a mirror in His hand and therein He saw the sluggard and the limping
and those who stagger and fall by the roadside on the way to the summit.
And He pitied them all. He would even have raised them to His stature
and He would have carried their burden. Nay, He would have bid their weakness
lean on His strength.
He did not utterly condemn the liar or the thief or the murderer, but
He did utterly condemn the hypocrite whose face is masked and whose hand
is gloved.
Often I have pondered on the heart that shelters all who come from the
wasteland to its sanctuary, yet against the hypocrite is closed and sealed.
On a day as we rested with Him in the Garden of Pomegranates, I said to
Him, "Master, you forgive and console the sinner and all the weak and
the infirm save only the hypocrite alone."
And He said, "You have chosen your words well when you called the sinners
weak and infirm. I do forgive them their weakness of body and their infirmity
of spirit. For their failings have been laid upon them by their forefathers,
or by the greed of their neighbors.
"But I tolerate not the hypocrite, because he himself lays a yoke upon
the guileless and the yielding.
"Weaklings, whom you call sinners, are like the featherless young that
fall from the nest. The hypocrite is the vulture waiting upon a rock for
the death of the prey.
"Weaklings are men lost in a desert. But the hypocrite is not lost. He
knows the way yet he laughs between the sand and the wind.
"For this cause I do not receive him."
Thus our Master spoke, and I did not understand. But I understand now.
Then the hypocrites of the land laid hands upon Him and they judged Him;
and in so doing they deemed themselves justified. For they cited the law
of Moses in the Sanhedrim in witness and evidence against Him.
And they who break the law at the rise of every dawn and break it again
at sunset, brought about His death.
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